Tasmanian Government Urged To Financially Compensate Victims Of Anti-LGBT Laws

LGBTQI advocacy groups have called on the Tasmanian government to pay damages to those who were convicted under the state’s now-repealed laws against homosexuality and cross-dressing. 

Tasmania decriminalised homosexuality in 1997 – the last state in Australia to do so. It repealed its law against cross-dressing in 2000. 

In 2016, the then Liberal government passed legislation that allowed those convicted under past anti-LGBTQI laws to have their criminal records erased.

In a piece published in The Mercury newspaper, Equality Tasmania, Tasmanian Council of Social Services, Tasmania’s Community Legal Services, the Tasmanian Women’s Legal Service has said it is now time to “rectify past injustice”

 Erasing Criminal Records

“Those who fell foul of our old laws endured humiliation, shame, stigma, discrimination, pain and trauma. Some took their own lives, while others lived lives deeply scarred by what they had endured,” the group said. “If the state is serious about making up for the cruelty it directly, knowingly and deliberately inflicted, it must provide financial redress.”

An independent review of laws that allowed convictions for homosexuality and cross-dressing to be erased, was conducted in 2020. According to the groups, while the Tasmanian government accepted all the recommendations, it ignored the review’s recommendation that victims of anti-LGBTQI laws be provided financial redress. 

“The Government says the Treasurer has the choice to make ex-gratia payments on application and that no other state offers redress,” said Equality Tasmania in a statement, adding, “redress should be automatic when a historic criminal record is successfully erased, not made after a further application process with an uncertain outcome… Tasmania should lead the nation given it was the last state to decriminalise homosexuality and the only state to criminalise cross-dressing.”